In other words yes, you are lumping them together. As I said, however, if you include reproduction in growth then you have to define two kinds of growth, reproductive growth and non-reproductive growth.
If we define life at the cellular level, then organisms that are multicellular are still included, and the only issue for multi-cellular life then is whether it is a colony or a single organism.
I appreciate for theoretical discussion it is useful to differentiate these - but this is usually within the context of a certain kind of life where a universal method for discriminating between 'somatic' reproduction and 'germline' reproduction (for lack of better terms) might be available. I'm not sure this has much utility (or feasability) when considering the entirety of life.
Though maybe I'm wrong. Do you think it is possible to describe a working understanding of the processes so that in each case we could differentiate between (mere) somatic reproduction of a single cell from germline reproduction leading to a new 'individual'?
This might require being able to strictly identify 'individual' which may prove to be interesting...
Is there some key difference between a bunch of bacteria engaging in binary fission and human skin cells? I honestly don't know.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
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